Radio Times review

Those two enfants terribles and scourges of answering machines everywhere, Ross and Russell Brand, reunite. Of course, a lot of water has flowed under many bridges since the Andrew Sachs/Radio 2 debacle.

Also coming in for a chat on the couch is another celebrity used to unflattering column inches, Lindsay Lohan, winning respectable reviews for her London stage role in Speed-the-Plow, and that nice Daniel Radcliffe. Music is provided by the Script.

Fawlty Towers: 7 facts and anecdotes

Did you know how tough Manuel actor Andrew Sachs was or why Major Gowen was censored?

Mathew Horne, Tamsin Greig & Andrew Sachs in new film

A film starring Frasier's Kelsey Grammer and Gavin and Stacey actor Mathew Horne is shooting in Croydon today. Horne, who played Gavin in the BBC Three sitcom, tweeted Croydon dubstep pioneer Skream to tell him he was filming Breaking the Bank in the town.

Andrew Sachs remembers filming Fawlty Towers in 1975

This is a scene from 'The Builders', the second episode of Fawlty Towers, in which Basil Fawlty [John Cleese] carries me to the hotel dining-room windows in an attempt to explain that he would like them cleaned. I wasn't hurt, but there were instances when I wasn't so lucky.

Appeal to Andrew Sachs to mend bitter family rift

Last night Georgina Baillie's father Charles revealed for the first time the full extent of the domestic chaos the Sachsgate prank had caused. A full six years after the 'joke' call, Andrew Sachs, 83, best-known for playing hapless Spanish waiter Manuel, has frozen Georgina out of his life.

Andrew Sachs: 'John Cleese once hit me so hard'

The actor on Sachsgate, fleeing the Nazis and being thumped by Basil Fawlty.

Video - Andrew Sachs: Brand & Ross stunt 'disgusting'

Andrew Sachs has been speaking about the so-called Sachsgate affair, in which Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand left lewd messages on his answer machine in 2008.

In 2008, controversy magnet-cum-comedian Russell Brand quit the BBC in shame over "Manuelgate". Now his rehabilitation at the Corporation is complete. Last month, he sat on the Question Time panel alongside that other womanising wag, Boris Johnson. Today Brand appeared on another Beeb institution, Desert Island Discs (Radio 4).

Prompted by the gently probing Kirsty Young, Brand reflected on that notorious 2008 prank phone call to actor Andrew Sachs. He talked of "nearly breaking" his beloved BBC but described the storm as a "dishonest scandal" created by "privately owned media with a pre-existing agenda to attack the BBC". Five years on, he still seemed slightly confused: contrite yet defiant, taking the blame yet deflecting it elsewhere.

Young mentioned her castaway's "beguilingly florid turn of phrase" in her introduction and Brand duly delivered, describing his father as a "sporadically present peripatetic figure" and himself as a "shamanic libido lizard". He confessed to being tired, which rendered him calm, thoughtful and less manic than his stand-up persona.

Brand talked frankly and movingly about his childhood loneliness and mother's cancer. He paid tribute to his mother and grandmother, admitting that they'd "come between me and the grave on many occasions" and said he wants children "to a point that's almost unseemly in a man".

Eager to know why Manuel from Fawlty Towers had a moustache? The worst thing about being in Blackadder? Or maybe which actors had to bring their own clothes to film a hit pilot? The answers to these hot-button issues in Jo Brand's poorly disguised old-timey clip-show are perfectly pitched, provoking - if anything - the kind of weary, non-committal, slightly surly shrug that's engendered by watching the actual programme itself.

Brand presides over a genial half-hour of sitcom quizzery that sees team leaders Rebecca Front and Barry 'Mine's a Large One!' Cryer joined by Hugh Dennis and Tony Robinson for a trawl through some well-thumbed snippets from the BBC archives. Andrew Sachs and Ian Lavender deliver creaky old war stories and Cryer delves into his endless fund of Willie Rushton anecdotes, before a round where the guests all try on a variety of wigs puts the show out of its misery.

Brand and guests are very easy people to like, but this is the worst kind of filler; to damn it with even fainter praise, it's the sort of programme that Alan Partridge would consider 'classic broadcasting'.

Radio Times review

This is billed as a panel game but it's more of a parlour game - perhaps after a stodgy supper, given the pervading air of lethargy - in which four comedy stars flop out on sofas separated by a bank of TV screens from host Jo Brand.

Team captains Rebecca Front and Barry Cryer are joined by guests Tony Robinson and Hugh Dennis, who divulge a few of their own comedy secrets and answer questions that pop up on screen from the likes of Andrew Sachs, Lesley Joseph and Shaun Williamson. It's mildly amusing, but Jo Brand is always better unscripted.